Create an event data store for CloudTrail events with the console

Event data stores for CloudTrail events can include CloudTrail management events, data events, and network activity events. You can keep the event data in an event data store for up to 3,653 days (about 10 years) if you choose the One-year extendable retention pricing option, or up to 2,557 days (about 7 years) if you choose the Seven-year retention pricing option..

CloudTrail Lake event data stores incur charges. When you create an event data store, you choose the pricing option you want to use for the event data store. The pricing option determines the cost for ingesting and storing events, and the default and maximum retention period for the event data store. For information about CloudTrail pricing and managing Lake costs, see AWS CloudTrail Pricing and Managing CloudTrail Lake costs.

To create an event data store for CloudTrail events

Use this procedure to create an event data store that logs CloudTrail management events, data events, or network activity events.

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the CloudTrail console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/.

2. From the navigation pane, under Lake, choose Event data stores.

3. Choose Create event data store.

4. On the Configure event data store page, in General details, enter a name for the event data store. A name is required.

5. Choose the Pricing option that you want to use for your event data store. The pricing option determines the cost for ingesting and storing events, and the default and maximum retention periods for your event data store. For more information, see AWS CloudTrail Pricing and Managing CloudTrail Lake costs.

   The following are the available options:

   • One-year extendable retention pricing - Generally recommended if you expect to ingest less than 25 TB of event data per month and want a flexible retention period of up to 10 years. For the first 366 days (the default retention period), storage is included at no additional charge with ingestion pricing. After 366 days, extended retention is available at pay-as-you-go pricing. This is the default option.

     • Default retention period: 366 days

     • Maximum retention period: 3,653 days

   • Seven-year retention pricing - Recommended if you expect to ingest more than 25 TB of event data per month and need a retention period of up to 7 years. Retention is included with ingestion pricing at no additional charge.

     • Default retention period: 2,557 days

     • Maximum retention period: 2,557 days

6. Specify a retention period for the event data store. Retention periods can be between 7 days and 3,653 days (about 10 years) for the One-year extendable retention pricing option, or between 7 days and 2,557 days (about seven years) for the Seven-year retention pricing option.

   CloudTrail Lake determines whether to retain an event by checking if the eventTime of the event is within the specified retention period. For example, if you specify a retention period of 90 days, CloudTrail will remove events when their eventTime is older than 90 days.

   Note

   If you are copying trail events to this event data store, CloudTrail will not copy an event if its eventTime is older than the specified retention period. To determine the appropriate retention period, take the sum of the oldest event you want to copy in days and the number of days you want to retain the events in the event data store (retention period = oldest-event-in-days + number-days-to-retain). For example, if the oldest event you're copying is 45 days old and you want to keep the events in the event data store for a further 45 days, you would set the retention period to 90 days.

7. (Optional) To enable encryption using AWS Key Management Service, choose Use my own AWS KMS key. Choose New to have an AWS KMS key created for you, or choose Existing to use an existing KMS key. In Enter KMS alias, specify an alias, in the format alias/MyAliasName. Using your own KMS key requires that you edit your KMS key policy to allow your event data store to be encrypted and decrypted. For more information, see Configure AWS KMS key policies for CloudTrail. CloudTrail also supports AWS KMS multi-Region keys. For more information about multi-Region keys, see Using multi-Region keys in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

   Using your own KMS key incurs AWS KMS costs for encryption and decryption. After you associate an event data store with a KMS key, the KMS key cannot be removed or changed.

   Note

   To enable AWS Key Management Service encryption for an organization event data store, you must use an existing KMS key for the management account.

8. (Optional) If you want to query against your event data using Amazon Athena, choose Enable in Lake query federation. Federation lets you view the metadata associated with the event data store in the AWS Glue Data Catalog and run SQL queries against the event data in Athena. The table metadata stored in the AWS Glue Data Catalog lets the Athena query engine know how to find, read, and process the data that you want to query. For more information, see Federate an event data store.

   To enable Lake query federation, choose Enable and then do the following:

   1. Choose whether you want to create a new role or use an existing IAM role. AWS Lake Formation uses this role to manage permissions for the federated event data store. When you create a new role using the CloudTrail console, CloudTrail automatically creates a role with the required permissions. If you choose an existing role, be sure the policy for the role provides the required minimum permissions.

   2. If you are creating a new role, enter a name to identify the role.

   3. If you are using an existing role, choose the role you want to use. The role must exist in your account.

9. (Optional) Choose Enable resource policy to add a resource-based policy to your event data store. Resource-based policies allow you to control which principals can perform actions on your event data store. For example, you can add a resource based policy that allows the root users in other accounts to query this event data store and view the query results. For example policies, see Resource-based policy examples for event data stores.

   A resource-based policy includes one or more statements. Each statement in the policy defines the principals that are allowed or denied access to the event data store and the actions the principals can perform on the event data store resource.

   The following actions are supported in resource-based policies for event data stores:

   • cloudtrail:StartQuery

   • cloudtrail:CancelQuery

   • cloudtrail:ListQueries

   • cloudtrail:DescribeQuery

   • cloudtrail:GetQueryResults

   • cloudtrail:GenerateQuery

   • cloudtrail:GenerateQueryResultsSummary

   • cloudtrail:GetEventDataStore

   For organization event data stores, CloudTrail creates a default resource-based policy that lists the actions that the delegated administrator accounts are allowed to perform on organization event data stores. The permissions in this policy are derived from the delegated administrator permissions in AWS Organizations. This policy is updated automatically following changes to the organization event data store or to the organization (for example, a CloudTrail delegated administrator account is registered or removed).

10. (Optional) In the Tags section, you can add up to 50 tag key pairs to help you identify, sort, and control access to your event data store. For more information about how to use IAM policies to authorize access to an event data store based on tags, see Examples: Denying access to create or delete event data stores based on tags. For more information about how you can use tags in AWS, see Tagging AWS resources in the Tagging AWS Resources User Guide.

11. Choose Next to configure the event data store.

12. On the Choose events page, choose AWS events, and then choose CloudTrail events.

13. For CloudTrail events, choose at least one event type. By default, Management events is selected. You can add management events, data events, and network activity events to your event data store.

14. (Optional) Choose Copy trail events if you want to copy events from an existing trail to run queries on past events. To copy trail events to an organization event data store, you must use the management account for the organization. The delegated administrator account cannot copy trail events to an organization event data store. For more information about considerations for copying trail events, see Considerations for copying trail events.

15. To have your event data store collect events from all accounts in an AWS Organizations organization, select Enable for all accounts in my organization. You must be signed in to the management account or delegated administrator account for the organization to create an event data store that collects events for an organization.

    Note

    To copy trail events or enable Insights events, you must be signed in to the management account for your organization.

16. Expand Additional settings to choose whether you want your event data store to collect events for all AWS Regions, or only the current AWS Region, and choose whether the event data store ingests events. By default, your event data store collects events from all Regions in your account and starts ingesting events when it's created.

    1. Select Include only the current region in my event data store to include only events that are logged in the current Region. If you do not choose this option, your event data store includes events from all Regions.

    2. Deselect Ingest events if you do not want the event data store to start ingesting events. For example, you may want to deselect Ingest events, if you are copying trail events and do not want the event data store to include any future events. By default, the event data store starts ingesting events when it's created.

17. If your event data store includes management events, you can choose from the following options. For more information about management events, see Logging management events.

    1. Choose between Simple event collection or Advanced event collection:

       • Choose Simple event collection if you want to log all events, log only read events, or log only write events. You can choose also to exclude AWS Key Management Service and Amazon RDS Data API events.

       • Choose Advanced event collection if you want to include or exclude management events based on the values of advanced event selector fields, including the eventName, eventType, eventSource, sessionCredentialFromConsole, and userIdentity.arn fields.

    2. If you selected Simple event collection, choose whether you want to log all events, log only read events, or log only write events. You can also choose to exclude AWS KMS and Amazon RDS Data API events.

    3. If you selected Advanced event collection, make the following selections:

       1. In Log selector template, choose a predefined template, or Custom to build a custom configuration based on advanced event selector field values.

          You can choose from the following predefined templates:

          • Log all events – Choose this template to log all events.

          • Log only read events – Choose this template to log only read events. Read-only events are events that do not change the state of a resource, such as Get* or Describe* events.

          • Log only write events – Choose this template to log only write events. Write events add, change, or delete resources, attributes, or artifacts, such as Put*, Delete*, or Write* events.

          • Log only AWS Management Console events – Choose this template to log only events originating from the AWS Management Console.

          • Exclude AWS service initiated events – Choose this template to exclude AWS service events, which have an eventType of AwsServiceEvent, and events initiated with AWS service-linked roles (SLRs).

       2. (Optional) In Selector name, enter a name to identify your selector. The selector name is a descriptive name for an advanced event selector, such as "Log management events from AWS Management Console sessions". The selector name is listed as Name in the advanced event selector and is viewable if you expand the JSON view.

       3. If you chose Custom, in Advanced event selectors build an expression based on advanced event selector field values.

          Note

          Selectors don't support the use of wildcards like * . To match multiple values with a single condition, you may use StartsWith, EndsWith, NotStartsWith, or NotEndsWith to explicitly match the beginning or end of the event field.

          1. Choose from the following fields.

             • readOnly – readOnly can be set to equals a value of true or false. When it is set to false, the event data store logs Write-only management events. Read-only management events are events that do not change the state of a resource, such as Get* or Describe* events. Write events add, change, or delete resources, attributes, or artifacts, such as Put*, Delete*, or Write* events. To log both Read and Write events, don't add a readOnly selector.

             • eventName – eventName can use any operator. You can use it to include or exclude any management event, such as CreateAccessPoint or GetAccessPoint.

             • userIdentity.arn – Include or exclude events for actions taken by specific IAM identities. For more information, see CloudTrail userIdentity element.

             • sessionCredentialFromConsole – Include or exclude events originating from an AWS Management Console session. This field can be set to equals or not equals with a value of true.

             • eventSource – You can use it to include or exclude specific event sources. The eventSource is typically a short form of the service name without spaces plus .amazonaws.com. For example, you could set eventSource equals to ec2.amazonaws.com to log only Amazon EC2 management events.

             • eventType – The eventType to include or exclude. For example, you can set this field to not equals AwsServiceEvent to exclude AWS service events.

          2. For each field, choose + Condition to add as many conditions as you need, up to a maximum of 500 specified values for all conditions.

             For information about how CloudTrail evaluates multiple conditions, see How CloudTrail evaluates multiple conditions for a field.

             Note

             You can have a maximum of 500 values for all selectors on an event data store. This includes arrays of multiple values for a selector such as eventName. If you have single values for all selectors, you can have a maximum of 500 conditions added to a selector.

          3. Choose + Field to add additional fields as required. To avoid errors, do not set conflicting or duplicate values for fields.

       4. Optionally, expand JSON view to see your advanced event selectors as a JSON block.

    4. Choose Enable Insights events capture to enable Insights. To enable Insights, you need to set up a destination event data store to collect Insights events based upon the management event activity in this event data store.

       If you choose to enable Insights, do the following.

       1. Choose the destination event store that will log Insights events. The destination event data store will collect Insights events based upon the management event activity in this event data store. For information about how to create the destination event data store, see To create a destination event data store that logs Insights events.

       2. Choose the Insights types. You can choose API call rate, API error rate, or both. You must be logging Write management events to log Insights events for API call rate. You must be logging Read or Write management events to log Insights events for API error rate.

18. To include data events in your event data store, do the following.

    1. Choose a resource type. This is the AWS service and resource on which data events are logged.

    2. In Log selector template, choose a template. You can choose to log all data events, readOnly events, writeOnly events, or Custom to build a custom log selector.

    3. (Optional) In Selector name, enter a name to identify your selector. The selector name is a descriptive name for an advanced event selector, such as "Log data events for only two S3 buckets". The selector name is listed as Name in the advanced event selector and is viewable if you expand the JSON view.

    4. If you selected Custom, in Advanced event selectors build an expression based on the values of advanced event selector fields.

       Note

       Selectors don't support the use of wildcards like * . To match multiple values with a single condition, you may use StartsWith, EndsWith, NotStartsWith, or NotEndsWith to explicitly match the beginning or end of the event field.

       1. Choose from the following fields.

          • readOnly - readOnly can be set to equals a value of true or false. Read-only data events are events that do not change the state of a resource, such as Get* or Describe* events. Write events add, change, or delete resources, attributes, or artifacts, such as Put*, Delete*, or Write* events. To log both read and write events, don't add a readOnly selector.

          • eventName - eventName can use any operator. You can use it to include or exclude any data event logged to CloudTrail, such as PutBucket, GetItem, or GetSnapshotBlock.

          • eventSource – The event source to include or exclude. This field can use any operator.

          • eventType – The event type to include or exclude. For example, you can set this field to not equals AwsServiceEvent to exclude AWS service events. For a list of event types, see eventType in CloudTrail record contents for management, data, and network activity events.

          • sessionCredentialFromConsole – Include or exclude events originating from an AWS Management Console session. This field can be set to equals or not equals with a value of true.

          • userIdentity.arn – Include or exclude events for actions taken by specific IAM identities. For more information, see CloudTrail userIdentity element.

          • resources.ARN - You can use any operator with resources.ARN, but if you use equals or does not equal, the value must exactly match the ARN of a valid resource of the type you've specified in the template as the value of resources.type.

            Note

            You can't use the resources.ARN field to filter resource types that do not have ARNs.

            For more information about the ARN formats of data event resources, see Actions, resources, and condition keys for AWS services in the Service Authorization Reference.

       2. For each field, choose + Condition to add as many conditions as you need, up to a maximum of 500 specified values for all conditions. For example, to exclude data events for two S3 buckets from data events that are logged on your event data store, you can set the field to resources.ARN, set the operator for does not start with, and then paste in an S3 bucket ARN for which you do not want to log events.

          To add the second S3 bucket, choose + Condition, and then repeat the preceding instruction, pasting in the ARN for or browsing for a different bucket.

          For information about how CloudTrail evaluates multiple conditions, see How CloudTrail evaluates multiple conditions for a field.

          Note

          You can have a maximum of 500 values for all selectors on an event data store. This includes arrays of multiple values for a selector such as eventName. If you have single values for all selectors, you can have a maximum of 500 conditions added to a selector.

       3. Choose + Field to add additional fields as required. To avoid errors, do not set conflicting or duplicate values for fields. For example, do not specify an ARN in one selector to be equal to a value, then specify that the ARN not equal the same value in another selector.

    5. Optionally, expand JSON view to see your advanced event selectors as a JSON block.

    6. To add another resource type on which to log data events, choose Add data event type. Repeat steps a through this step to configure advanced event selectors for the resource type.

19. To include network activity events in your event data store, do the following.

    1. From Network activity event source, choose the source for network activity events.

    2. In Log selector template, choose a template. You can choose to log all network activity events, log all network activity access denied events, or choose Custom to build a custom log selector to filter on multiple fields, such as eventName and vpcEndpointId.

    3. (Optional) Enter a name to identify the selector. The selector name is listed as Name in the advanced event selector and is viewable if you expand the JSON view.

    4. In Advanced event selectors build expressions by choosing values for Field, Operator, and Value. You can skip this step if you are using a predefined log template.

       1. For excluding or including network activity events, you can choose from the following fields in the console.

          • eventName – You can use any operator with eventName. You can use it to include or exclude any event, such as CreateKey.

          • errorCode – You can use it to filter on an error code. Currently, the only supported errorCode is VpceAccessDenied.

          • vpcEndpointId – Identifies the VPC endpoint that the operation passed through. You can use any operator with vpcEndpointId.

       2. For each field, choose + Condition to add as many conditions as you need, up to a maximum of 500 specified values for all conditions.

       3. Choose + Field to add additional fields as required. To avoid errors, do not set conflicting or duplicate values for fields.

    5. To add another event source for which you want to log network activity events, choose Add network activity event selector.

    6. Optionally, expand JSON view to see your advanced event selectors as a JSON block.

20. To copy existing trail events to your event data store, do the following.

    1. Choose the trail that you want to copy. By default, CloudTrail only copies CloudTrail events contained in the S3 bucket's CloudTrail prefix and the prefixes inside the CloudTrail prefix, and does not check prefixes for other AWS services. If you want to copy CloudTrail events contained in another prefix, choose Enter S3 URI, and then choose Browse S3 to browse to the prefix. If the source S3 bucket for the trail uses a KMS key for data encryption, ensure that the KMS key policy allows CloudTrail to decrypt the data. If your source S3 bucket uses multiple KMS keys, you must update each key's policy to allow CloudTrail to decrypt the data in the bucket. For more information about updating the KMS key policy, see KMS key policy for decrypting data in the source S3 bucket.

    2. Choose the time range for copying the events. CloudTrail checks the prefix and log file name to verify the name contains a date between the chosen start and end date before attempting to copy trail events. You can choose a Relative range or an Absolute range. To avoid duplicating events between the source trail and destination event data store, choose a time range that is earlier than the creation of the event data store.

       Note

       CloudTrail only copies trail events that have an eventTime within the event data store’s retention period. For example, if an event data store’s retention period is 90 days, then CloudTrail will not copy any trail events with an eventTime older than 90 days.

       • If you choose Relative range, you can choose to copy events logged in the last 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 7 years, or a custom range. CloudTrail copies the events logged within the chosen time period.

       • If you choose Absolute range, you can choose a specific start and end date. CloudTrail copies the events that occurred between the chosen start and end dates.

    3. For Permissions, choose from the following IAM role options. If you choose an existing IAM role, verify that the IAM role policy provides the necessary permissions. For more information about updating the IAM role permissions, see IAM permissions for copying trail events.

       • Choose Create a new role (recommended) to create a new IAM role. For Enter IAM role name, enter a name for the role. CloudTrail automatically creates the necessary permissions for this new role.

       • Choose Use a custom IAM role ARN to use a custom IAM role that is not listed. For Enter IAM role ARN, enter the IAM ARN.

       • Choose an existing IAM role from the drop-down list.

21. Choose Next to review your choices.

22. On the Review and create page, review your choices. Choose Edit to make changes to a section. When you're ready to create the event data store, choose Create event data store.

23. The new event data store is visible in the Event data stores table on the Event data stores page.

    From this point forward, the event data store captures events that match its advanced event selectors (if you kept the Ingest events option selected). Events that occurred before you created the event data store are not in the event data store, unless you opted to copy existing trail events.

You can now run queries on your new event data store. The Sample queries tab provides example queries to get you started. For more information about creating and editing queries, see Create or edit a query with the CloudTrail console.

You can also view the managed dashboards, or create custom dashboards to visualize event trends. For more information about Lake dashboards, see CloudTrail Lake dashboards.